


LITANY in which one GETS TOO CLOSE to an OPEN FLAME (and refuses to learn from it)

by poppytears



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Feels, Caliginous-Flushed Vacillation, Canon Universe, Dream Bubbles (Homestuck), Drug Use, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, Land of Heat and Clockwork, Land of Pulse and Haze, M/M, Meteorstuck, POV Dave Strider, Some Humor, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppytears/pseuds/poppytears
Summary: you’ve woken up in a dream bubble on Karkat’s dogshit planet. you guess you weren’t planning on doing anything important today, anyways, but you’re still going to hold it against him for wasting your time like this. goddamn self-important asshole.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	1. The RED EYE of the SEARING SUN glows above you. You get the feeling that it's WATCHING YOU. It's always been WATCHING.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a work in progress right now - the first and second chapters are more or less polished but there might be some minor revisions coming before the third one is posted. also be aware that there are homophobic slurs tossed around in dialogue, and there's some pretty heavy weed use up ahead. thanks for reading : )

Recently, everything’s been getting on your nerves.

The world casts a violent, pulsing red light over your face. You flick your shades up, briefly, to take in the colour in its complete saturation; you conclude that it is, in fact, extremely red, and you flick them back down.

You’re already off to a great start. You’d say there’s a good chance that Karkat is fucking around here somewhere, if this is what the dream bubble is manifesting. You’ve never been to his planet, but that hardly matters. Judging by what he’s told you – testily, in short, angry bursts – and the general, scathing vitriol of his godawful personality, you’d have to be an idiot to not put it together. You might even go as far as to say that this planet was designed to make that frothing shithead even more uptight than he already was.

You take a languid moment to reflect unhurriedly on how similar your planets are. You guess you might as well admit that your planet didn’t make you a happy camper, either, and was almost definitely generated for the specific purpose of keeping you miserable. You’ve found the same terrible and ever-present bright red here, just as you did back on LOHAC; it’s an identical scorched-scarlet hue that you and Karkat have in common. There’s something about the permanence and the zeal of the colour red that makes it grating.

All that’s missing here is the sickening screech of metal-on-metal and the searing, unforgiving heat. That was all you. And the game made sure you’d never forget it.

Suffice to say, you don’t think neither you nor Karkat could have possibly been given anything worse. The creation of your planet and this one was as a calculated move. It was designed to disturb you just enough to keep you teeteringly close to the edge, but not enough to jump off. It was a test to see how far you could be bent before you broke.

Bro always wanted you to thrive under pressure. You guess LOHAC did, too. You went from your life with him beneath the feverish and blazing Texan sun to your magma-covered and iron-gripped planet. Maybe the two weren’t so different. Maybe they were the same thing.

But you aren’t going to dwell on that now. You can feel something acrid and hostile rising in your chest. You want to sulk silently like a kid again. And you’re probably overthinking all of this, anyways - you’re beating a horse that’s been dead for years. Maybe you and Karkat were just shitty, resentful, self-important thirteen-year-olds with too much to prove and nobody to prove it to. All the game did was take the emotional bullshit the two of you couldn’t be bothered to work through and blow it up to planet-sized proportions. A Narcissus pond slap-in-the-face. A universe of an echo chamber.

But who can tell what the game’s design really was, anyways? And more importantly, who gives a fuck?

Whatever. You’ve worked yourself into a moodiness now, and you’re done thinking about it. There’s no telling how long you’ll be in the dream bubble for, and this shitty, red manifestation of Karkat’s insecurities is making you uneasy. There must be something to do on this stupid, bloody hunk of rock. You guess you’d better get moving.

* * *

You’re sixteen and blisteringly spiteful of it. Apathy suited you well in the past and you’re not about to let go of it now, not after everything that’s happened, not outwardly anyways; you’re gliding imperturbably through the endless, synthetic days and you’re indifferent about everything. Nothing gets to you. It took a lot of work to cultivate a persona this effortlessly cool.

Inside, though, you’re seething. You’re boiling over. You think you have plenty of reasons to be bitter, but you'll be damned if you've got a single motive to examine any of them. In fact, you like it that way. You’re not Rose, after all. She gets a kick out of picking her own mind apart and laying it bare for the pleasure of her own scrutiny. It’s not brains, it’s sadomasochism, simple as that, and you’d rather ignore everything you’ve ever thought or felt than analyzing all of it like a circle-jerk of a science experiment.

The only problem is she gets off on picking you apart, too, which is something you could really live without. You can’t avoid her, though, and you can’t bring yourself to think cruelly of her; you still remember dying alongside her. You’re blood, you’re bonded, you’re connected in a way you could never be with anyone else, not since you ascended together in that burning cancer of your session, and if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for her. That’s not to say you don’t find her obnoxious, though. And vainglorious and pretentious, among other things. Mostly you wish she would stop trying to tell you that you’re in love with Karkat. No, really. You don’t give a sputtering fuck about him and you’re tired of repeating it. You don’t care about how similar your planets are, or the ways in which the both of you disguise your self-doubt, or the amount of time you spend thinking about him, or any of the other reasons Rose has sidled up to you and purred about like a festering psychologist with a malpractice lawsuit. Actually – and you’ve told her this yourself – you think she’s projecting her own overwhelming xenophilia onto you. That’s right, Lalonde. Yeah, you’ve figured out the whole Kanaya secret all by yourself. Rose isn’t the only one on the meteor with half a brain cell.

Trudging nonchalantly across his planet, you don’t think you feel a single goddamn dalton of partiality towards Karkat. You think it’s fair to say that you probably hate him even more than usual. Why couldn’t it be TZ’s planet instead? At least that one had a bitching colour scheme. You’ve been caught in dream bubbles there before, back when you were with her all the time –

You know what, you don’t really want to think about that right now. Yeah, you just decided fuck that. Never mind.

You raise your eyes to the horizon. All there is to see is red and black for miles and miles, and a sky the colour of rotting meat. You guess you could go fly up and look around, but you’re generally convinced that flying is for pussy bitches, unless it’s done for an ironic purpose. How much gayer could you get? Oh, yeah, right. Look at you, fluttering around in your janky red cape and your faggy little clock symbol. Might as well go full Superman and wear a pair of neon Speedos over your skin-tight fairy hosiery. Might as well start walking around in a harness and a jockstrap so close-fitting it should be considered autoerotic. Not happening.

You’re busying yourself thinking of other tight gay metaphors when you notice something in the distance. Something familiar. You’re in luck.

It’s your apartment unit. Jutting out of a blood lake like a monolith, suspended on the bare metal skeleton just as it was when you entered the medium, before Jade added all the extra parts; you feel a rush of exhilaration and dread that you can’t quite explain and don’t want to, either. You’ve been back before, of course - it always seems to crop up in your bubbles. But somehow you’re always expecting – well, it’s drippy and candy-assed of you to admit it, but a part of you thinks you’re going to walk in and find your bro catching z’s on the couch or smoking out the window like nothing ever happened.

Obviously, that’s not possible. Your bro died three years ago. There’s no coming back for him. You left his body on the cold blue platform yourself.

You put it out of your mind as soon as it’s tangible and there. Nothing gets to you. Nothing gets under your skin. You’re a Strider first. Even if you’re the only one left.

You make a casual, aloof beeline towards the apartment. You’d rather kill time in there than out here. And anyways, blundering aimlessly across Karkat’s blackened planet isn’t a great look for you, even if you’ll have to fly to get up to the apartment.

At the blood-soaked shore of the lake, you tilt your head back to take in the paralyzing height of your apartment. The scorched metal scaffolding, stark and bleak against the rest of the obsidian landscape, and the concrete halo of your unit at the very top - the bare corpse of an urban angel – all you can think of is your own planet. The dread mounts as you begin to rise above the ground. The metal beams fall away as you ascend.

You reach the top and make your landing on the roof.

No matter how many times you revisit in the dream bubbles, there’s always something strikingly alien about the feeling of the beige cement underfoot, like a recurring fever dream. Was this ever real at all? Did the game invent this home, and your own psyche just take the initiative to fill in the gaps? Maybe the apartment only ever existed in the medium, and you’ve convinced yourself – after years of forays into dreamt replications of it – that it was always part of your life. Who knows? You’ll never voice those doubts to anyone. But you can still pinpoint the sprinkling of bloodstains scattered across the cement – that one from a particularly bad nosebleed – that one from a sword lunge, the depth of it underestimated and requiring stitches in the kitchen – material history of you and your bro.

Who knows? Who cares? You’ll never have answers. Thinking about it will drive you insane. You reason that your lack of internal confrontation is just another mode of self-preservation.

You open the door to the stairwell. The red, pulsing light of the planet spills into the darkness. The cold, subterranean smell of cinderblocks and stale air that all stairwells seem to have wafts upwards. The conflicted homesickness is like a punch in the gut. Leaving the door open behind you, you make your descent, and it goes reasonably well until you turn the corner at the first flight down and catch sight of your apartment door. It’s completely ajar.

You freeze where you are, just a flight above your floor, looking downwards; you can see into the apartment from where you are, the corner of the fridge, the tangle of wires across the floor – your mind is flooded with an icy dread. There’s no doubt. It’s your bro. Somehow he’s back – the exact mechanism doesn’t matter now – and he’s waiting, he’s waiting for you in there, and he knows you’re here. He’s toying with you. He wants you to know it.

You have no choice but to keep going. You guess this game is gonna end in the strife of a lifetime. Opening your strife specibus, you draw your weapon in silence. It’s a really cool sword. At least you won’t look like a total dweeb in front of your bro for your first time seeing him since he was shanked by that flying dog jerkoff.

You advance, creeping as quietly and impassively down the flight as you can possibly manage, but your heart is in palpitations and your mind’s gripped by a paralyzing anxiety. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been dreaming of a bittersweet Strider reconciliation and reunion for months and months (the both of you apologize and promise to be better, maybe there's some totally rude and ironic Mad Snacks Yo gameplay); now that you’re seconds away from it, the concept terrifies you. But God – you so desperately want to see him that you don’t even care. You miss him more than it’s cool to admit. You’ve got things you’re aching to say. You’ve got a life that was meant to have him in it.

Reaching the door at the bottom of the flight, you nudge it all the way open with the tip of your ratty All-Stars and brace yourself.

The apartment offers itself up to you with a quiet sigh of the door against the low-pile carpet. The place is flooded with red light, pouring in from the window next to your bro’s set-up; it would be a sick look if it didn’t spur a deep, subtle anxiety in you. You conclude, though, that it is still, in fact, objectively sick regardless of the way your pussy psyche reacts to it. A couple more cursory glances tells you that there’s nothing out of place here. The stillness of the apartment is tomb-like. You lower your sword – there’s no way anyone could sneak up on you like this – but you’re tense and wound-up and you don’t really know where to go from here. You’re wondering where your bro could be waiting for you when you hear a low thud from the back of the apartment. It sounds like a window opening. It must be coming from your room.

You raise your blade again before you even know that you’re doing it and move furtively inwards, past the fridge and the counter and the couch, watching your step over the wires and your bro’s sweet ironic paraphernalia littering the floor; the door to the tiny hallway is open and you peer cautiously around it. From there you can see that the door to your room is ever-so-slightly ajar. Someone’s moving around in there, judging from the hushed footfalls against the threadbare carpet, and a seed of doubt begins to grow in your mind. This isn’t like him; these aren’t his tactics. Sure, sometimes he’d get you to go on a goose-chase for him, but never into your room, and never making himself this obvious.

You’re lost now. You don’t know what to think. Only thing you can figure to do is kick open the door and surprise whatever blunt motherfucker is in there before he surprises you, whether it’s your bro or not. You hoist your sword and ready yourself to burst in there.

The door slams open before you can get the chance.


	2. You BEAR WITNESS to the DRY and SCORCHING SUNSET. The GREAT EYE of the BLAZING SUN sinks slowly BELOW THE HORIZON. It WATCHES YOU until it DISAPPEARS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait - thanks for sticking with me through it! just a warning, this chapter features some heavy weed use. have fun and stay tuned for the next update : )

You recoil in shock before your instincts kick in and you drive the blade forward, eyes shut from the sudden panic and aiming high – you guess you’re still expecting your bro, towering high above you like a deity hell-bent on cold and bloody retribution – but your blade slams into drywall, not flesh, and you get a hysterical shriek in your ear for your trouble.

You open your eyes. Oh, Christ. Of course.

“What in the Mother Grub’s oozing venereal orifice are you doing here, you sickening fuck? You could’ve killed me! Dave? Hello, asshole! What the fuck?” Karkat yells, practically foaming at the mouth, shaking from adrenaline like a small dog.

First of all, you don’t know what the godawful hell that means. Second of all, you’re too busy wrenching your sword out of the plaster and trying to stop your hands from trembling to say something smart-ass in reply. It bursts out with a shower of pulverized drywall debris – the both of you shield your eyes from the dust – and you stow it away in your strife specibus.

It’s a good thing he’s a five-foot-five bitch. An inch taller, and you would’ve scalped him like a Tarantino flick.

The second the dust settles, he opens his moron trap again. “Is this your fucking hive? No wonder it’s so miserably freakish in here. Why the fuck is it on metal legs? I accidentally touched one of those grotesque, pervy puppets on the loungeplank, by the way, and I hauled ass to the ablution block just in case there’s some sort of transmittable disease on those things, but wouldn’t you fucking know it? There was another one there, too. Do you get off on them watching you or something? Strider? Huh? You’ve got to be completely deranged –”

You push past him and stalk into your room. He’s still jabbering away, probably ‘cause it takes up less energy than critical thought, but you couldn’t be bothered to give a fuck about him or the shit coming out of his mouth. Instead you’re reeling from the sudden revelation that your bro isn’t here after all, and you guess it’s stupid you even entertained the idea in the first place, but you could have sworn you had him right within your reach. You could sense his tension in the air. You were so close. You feel a nauseating anger begin to build up in your stomach. Whether he was here or not, the fact is that Karkat’s replaced him in the space the two of you shared, which you once thought was untouchable and immutable, but isn’t anymore. You want to turn around and throw a punch hard enough to knock that stupid look off his face and into his throat. You want to hurt him and make him leave.

There’s a crack deep within you that keeps widening. You look down. Your hands are still shaking.

Karkat opens his stupid, fat mouth again. “I guess it’s too much to expect an apology for nearly getting shaved down to the fucking cranium by a shitty sword –”

“Would’ve been an improvement,” you mutter, crouching down by the shelf where you keep your records. You’re done thinking about things. You’re making a beeline for your dream bubble stockpile. He ignores what you’re doing as you pull a couple records out and kicks around your room instead, performing a spot-on impersonation of a boneheaded three-year-old having a temper tantrum.

“- because the great and magnanimous Dave Strider, Knight of Time and master of bodily fluid excretion –”

“Great and magnanimous? Aw, gee. That’s sweet.”

“– can do no wrong when he’s role-playing as the leaking, conflagrant orifice of the stemcluster trull–”

“At least I’m not dressed like a forty-year-old virgin who lives in a trailer with a sex doll.”

He gives you a look and pointedly eyeballs your godtier fit. Fuck. You forgot you were wearing this faggy shit.

You recover gracefully. “Anyways, what the fuck does any of that even mean? Just shut your flapping shithole for a goddamn minute.”

You set the records aside and reach far into the shelf, until your fingers scrape the back of the wall. You spend about three excruciating seconds rooting around back there, Karkat ogling you in silence and the creeping feeling that you look like a total dildo, before your hand finally hits the canvas fabric you’re looking for.

You drag out the small backpack you keep in there. Karkat’s interest is piqued. You can tell because he has no more witless insults to puke up. “What’s in there?” he asks you. You get the feeling that you’ve just born witness to the shortest and most concise sentence Karkat’s ever cobbled together in his whole unhinged life.

You’d prefer to show rather than tell, since you’re a cool guy. You zip the bag open and pull out the glass jars from inside, tin lids screwed tightly on. You don’t know whether these extraterrestrial idiots have weed like you do, but you guess you’re about to find out. You just hope it doesn’t kill him, seeing as his alien brain is about a million times smaller than yours.

You think that’s funny, so you tell it to him. “I hope this doesn’t kill you, seeing as your alien brain is about a million times smaller than mine,” you say. He catches the insult and glares you down, but you’re just getting started. You give him a lopsided smirk (since you’re a cool guy) and inspect one of the jars; you’ve got them separated by strain. As much as you really do want to see Karkat get so fucked that he’ll think he’s dying, you’re not about to deal with the crazy shit he’ll pull on a high like that.

You decide on a milder strain and feel like a responsible person. It grosses you out.

You unscrew the jar and take a whiff. The pungency slaps you in the face and you inhale sharply, nodding. “Yeah, this is it,” you say.

Karkat watches you with an idiotic, choleric expression that you wish you could slap off him. “What the wretched fuck is that,” he deadpans. You allow yourself another subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sideways grin. You know it irks him that he’s the one who doesn’t know what’s going on, and you’re going to ride that wave for as long as you can.

You turn the bag upside down and shake it. Your janky metal weed grinder comes barrelling loudly out onto the floor, closely followed by your pack of rolling papers and your filters. Just as Karkat sets a poofy hand on his hip and a lecturing finger in the air, ready to chew you out again, you turn your face back up to him amicably, like nothing’s wrong at all. “You smoke it, you massive shitstain,” you inform him genially. “Relax, I’ll teach you how. We’ll hotbox this bitch.”

“If you kill me, Dave, I swear –”

“It’s not gonna fucking kill you, dumbass. You don’t have this on your planet? Look, isn’t that familiar to you?”

You point over to your shelf, where you keep your dead things. Among the floating, formaldehyde-soaked specimens and bits of rock and bone is the sick orange bong your bro got you for your last birthday. Was it your last birthday? On second thought, you might have just seen it on the kitchen table and decided to keep it. Who cares?

Karkat stomps over to check it out. You toss the jar of weed onto your bed, along with your rolling paper and filter pack, and you grab your rolling tray off your desk before you crash on top of the unmade sheets. You’re way too cool to make your fucking bed. You figure if Karkat is bothered by it he’ll just get uptight, shout for a bit, and then make it for you.

He taps on the glass bowl. His nail makes a subdued clinking noise.

“Obviously I know what this is, bulgemunch,” he gripes. “You smoke out of it.”

“Dude, that’s literally just what I told you.”

“Fuck off,” he suggests. Then he glances back at it. “That’s illegal,” he says.

“Not on a meteor, it ain’t,” you tell him. It’s a better observation to make rather than to mention that neither of your home planets even exist anymore, and everything you once lived your life by and all the laws that governed you are now dead and gone. You can tell he’s thinking the same thing. It’s easier not to talk about it.

Crossing your legs, you balance the rolling tray in your lap and get to work. As much as you love your bong, there’s no way Karkat is going to manage it. You don’t even think watching him flounder and cough till he pukes would be funny enough to waste a bowl on him.

He shuffles around in the corner of your room awkwardly for a second, obviously unsure of what to do with himself, and then plods over to join you on the bed. He jostles the tray as he crosses his legs, craning over to see what you’re doing.

“Watch it,” you warn, and then you’re cut short by the feeling of his knee pressing against your thigh.

You marvel briefly at the sudden rush of hot anxiety that courses through you. The sensation is electric and terrifying. You don’t know whether to feel repulsed or attracted, and you falter for a lethal second.

It spurs on a sickness in the back of your mind. Something you’ve pushed down and locked away.

But then you play it cool, ‘cause you’re a Strider, and you’re good at ignoring things that scare you. You force it from your mind as you grind up a couple buds and, under Karkat’s shrewd stare, fit a filter into the paper, pack it and roll it, twist the end closed, do it again. You toy with the idea of letting him lick the seal but you think that would probably be disastrously faggoty, so you decide against it. You’ve got a handful of fat joints by the time you’re done, and you extricate yourself from your tray and his casual, magnetic touch to stumble debonairly towards the window.

It groans reluctantly as you shove it closed. You spin back to face Karkat, palms flung out back against the table, a really suave pose. “Let’s hit those,” you tell him.

“What’s it like?” he asks.

“Well –” you fumble around on the surface of the table for a lighter, “– it’s like, if it’s your first time, your muscles are gonna relax like you’ve never felt before, and you’re gonna feel, like, these sweet waves wash over you, and don’t even worry, man. You’re so fucking tense all the time. It’ll be good for you to get the stick out that you parked up your asshole.”

He contemplates you with burning scrutiny. “Been thinking about parking things up asses a lot lately, Strider?”

“Only in the morning,” you say, and put a joint between your teeth.

You brandish the lighter and flick the flame open, holding it to the tip of the joint and drawing breath in till it’s glowing orange and smoldering. Karkat watches as you pocket the lighter, take a deep hit, grab the joint between two fingers and exhale a stream of smoke.

“Behold, the method.”

“You look like such a fucking douche,” he says.

“Shut the fuck up,” you tell him serenely. “Come here.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Don’t be a shithead. Standing is better. Bigger lung capacity.”

“Okay, fuck you, fine.”

“Grab one. I’m not sharing mine.”

He stands in front of you, shoulders hunched and irritable, and places his joint between his teeth like you did before he immediately plucks it back out and scowls.

“Fuck, that’s disgusting. Holy shit. How do you stomach this?”

“You get used to it,” you tell him cheerfully. You remember the first acrid taste on the tongue. Good memories. “Put it back in. I’ll light it for you.”

He does as you say. You take another hit and deposit your own joint in an ashtray before you sidle up to him, real close - another couple centimetres and you’d feel his breath on your skin - then you cup a hand round the tip of his joint.

“When I light it, breathe in slowly. It’ll taste nasty but just deal with it,” you say. You snap on the lighter and set the joint gently alight. He sucks in and it glows, and your eyes wander for a fraction of a second – heavy eyelashes, shallow freckles – before he rips it from his mouth and coughs out a violent cloud of smoke.

"What the fuck,” he chokes, turning away. “Jesus, that’s horrific.”

He retches a little while you look blithely about the room for a water bottle, of which there is none. He gets over it on his own in a minute, and turns back to look at you, eyes watering, joint held precariously between two pinched fingers; you’re still leaning there against your desk, taking the opportunity to smoke unbothered.

“Thanks, asshole,” he rasps.

“Not a problem,” you say generously. “You gonna keep going or what?”

“Sure, whatever,” he says.

“Great,” you tell him. “Close the door.”

“Huh?” he blanches. “Why –”

“So the smoke stays in here, moron,” you roll your eyes. “What did you think I meant?”

“What the fuck do you mean, what do I think you meant?” he demands. You have a feeling this line of conversation is going to turn your sesh into an idiot party real quick.

“You thought I was gonna take my dick out or something, huh, Vantas?” you jeer, not making things any better. “That’s a slip even Freud would be shitting his pants over. Being a faggot is one hell of a drug.”

He slams the door shut. You laugh at the display. He storms over and gets right up in your face, all five and a half feet of bristling, angry, small-dog-syndrome, and stares you down.

“Take that the fuck back,” he glowers.

You match his stare steadily for a second while you weigh the pros and cons of getting into a literal fistfight with Karkat. On one hand, you’d most likely beat his ass, and that would be great. On the other, this escalated way too fast to be funny, you've just realized getting in the way of those freakish, sharp teeth probably isn't a smart idea, and most importantly, your joint is burning itself out and you kinda just want to get back to it.

You push yourself away from the desk and wander coolly over to your bed. You muster up the smoothest shrug you have in you. “It’s all chill, dude,” you tell him. “Forget it.”

He crosses his arms and hunches up there in the middle of the room, taking a resentful hit off his joint, coughing a little. He glares at you as you unfold yourself nonchalantly on your bed and exhale a fine ribbon of smoke.

“You gotta relax, or else you’ll wind yourself up and end up tweaking out,” you tell him.

“Maybe if you stopped fucking with me I might get the chance,” he says sourly.

“Alright, alright,” you concede. “Let’s try again. Sit your sulky ass back down. Come on.”

He perches, uptight, on the end of your bed. The two of you smoke in silence for a minute until he turns to you, warns you against saying anything dumb with a preliminary scowl, and says, “I think I’m feeling it.”

“Fantastic,” you say. “Keep going.” You reach over, grab the ashtray you abandoned on the desk, and stub out your roach. You’re about to get started on your second and you’re coming up fine. You look around your room with a newfound appreciation for the red light filtering in from outside. Your head is starting to feel full of cotton, and your thoughts are becoming syrupy. You try making conversation about it.

“Sick lighting, right?” you say. You hope that encompasses the feeling.

“Not really,” he says. “Fucking game knew about my blood. It wanted me to die.”

You nod. You think you get it.


End file.
